1. 10.

6. Yea, and also be without the hope of a delivery or outgate. Hence
crieth Heman, Psalm lxxxviii. 4-5, "I am counted with them that go down
into the pit, free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave,
whom thou rememberest no more, and they are cut off from thine hand."
Yea, they may be driven to the very border of despair, and conclude that
there is no hope, as the church did, Ezek. xxxvii. 11, "Our bones are
dried, and our hope is lost, and we are cut off for our parts;" and as
Job, chap. vii. 6, "My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are
spent without hope;" and chap. xix. 10, "He hath destroyed me on every
side, and I am gone: mine hope hath been removed like a tree."

Now, though sometimes, as we see in Job, and in Heman too, a soul may be
under such a sad and sharp dispensation, and yet not brought to question
their state, or to conclude themselves children of wrath, lying still in
black nature, yet it is not so with all who are so exercised; but many
under such a dispensation, may at least be in the dark as to their state
before God; and if they do not positively assert their state to be bad,
yet they do much question if they be in the state of grace, and would be
comforted under all their pressures and afflictions, if they could win
to the least well-grounded apprehension of their interest in Christ.

In such a case as this is, there is ground for a poor soul to make use
of Christ for outgate; and an outgate may be had in God's time, and as
he seeth fit, by a right use-making of and going out to him, who is the
Truth. So, then, the soul that would have its state and condition
cleared up, and a discovery of its being reconciled to God through
Jesus, and in a state of grace, and would make use of Christ as the
Truth, for this end, would,

(1.) Look out to Christ, as a feeling High Priest, faithful and
merciful, who, being like us in all things, except sin, doth sympathise
with, and succour such as are tempted, Heb. ii. 17, 18. And as a Priest,
"that is touched with the feeling of our infirmities," Heb. iv. 15.
Albeit Christ, in the deepest of his darkness, was never made to
question his Sonship, but avouched God to be his God even when he was
forsaken, Psalm xxii. 1. Matt, xxvii. 46. Mark xv. 34. Yet he knew what
it was to be tempted, to question his Sonship, when the devil said unto
him, Matt. iv. 3, "If thou be the Son of God;" and he knows what such a
distress as he himself w